And I'll throw my two cents in as I spent several hours with Jody and his wife helping to salvage what they could from it from the towing yard in Atlantic a day or two later and started this post and posted a few pics I took of the damage.
Please, Jody, feel free to use your expertise and experience as a retired firefighter and jump on in if you think I've made a false assumption or misinterpretation of what I saw/photographed that day in Atlantic.
From what I saw, the fire did NOT start due to heat from the turbo, exhaust or the engine itself. Other than the chemicals from the extinguishers all over everywhere and a couple of burned insulation wires stretched across the the engine compartment and the wiring harness to the IP, the engine compartment damage was pretty much confined to the front 2/3 of the ~1" of carpet around the engine floor opening and to the corresponding area of the underside of the doghouse cover. When I went underneath and looked up, both sides and the bottom of the motor showed absolutely no heat/fire/burn damage and was as clean as a running 6.5TD could be.
What I did see was quite a bit of fire/heat damage under the "hood" area that is in front and above the radiator, with two big wiring harness bundles with multiple gauges of wires from what looked to be about 4 ga down to 14 ga - ALL with all the insulation burned off of them from the hood area that led up/came down from the passageway that goes up between the front nose panel and firewall to the back of the dash. What I also saw was smoke/burn marks going back from that area, over top of the radiator and to the fringe of the floor carpeting around the opening that was near those bundles going up to behind the dash area and the burn marks going over to the carpet on the driver side the motor the doghouse bottom seals down to that had burned about halfway around that opening and over to the passenger side - and was most likely the cause of the flames/smoke the cat and humans reacted to/saw. This makes perfect sense as the air coming in through the grill and "hood" area while driving would have greatly fanned any hot melting plastic insulation into flames and then blown the flaming, dripping plastic insulation back into the engine compartment and onto the carpet fringe.
Interior-wise you could see where there was definitely a hot fire from behind/inside the dash that got hot enough to melt part of the dash, char/shatter the the windshields and got high enough to get the fabric headliner on the underside of the front loft bed that lowers from the ceiling and burned back the headliner back to the galley/dining area.
When I took pictures of the melted out (+) terminal of the inboard Optima Yellow Top in the battery compartment, I thought it was due to heat/flames from the motor compartment fire. Then I started looking closer at my photos and realized that the battery compartment is completely separated from the engine compartment with steel panels, and is down low behind the right front tire and there was NO evidence of flames anywhere near the wheel well/battery box.
CONCLUSION: There was a short in one of the main harnesses - either internally to a ground wire or from rubbing against a frame/chassis part - pre-fuseblock, (possibly that one big cable that could very well have been the main Positive feed to the fuse block on the side of the dash) that not only got hot enough to melt, then catch on fire, the insulation but pulled enough current to melt out the lead Optima side terminal leaving the steel bolt and copper side lug intact. The wiring heat/fire just amplified behind the dash and the voltage surges/heat could very well be the reason why the USB/Stereo was acting funky just before the cat discovered the fire and all sh*t hit the fan, so to speak.
Well Jody
@3bals, what do you think of my observations, reason for the fire?
